KPV

KPV is the gut-inflammation peptide in this catalog, a small fragment of a natural hormone built to quiet an immune response that won't turn off. Instead of acting on a surface receptor, it gets carried directly into cells and calms the signaling that switches inflammatory genes on, and it shows direct antimicrobial activity against common skin bacteria and yeast as well. People run it for a gut that stays irritated no matter what else they've tried, and for skin or infection-related support on that same mechanism. It's sold as a reconstituted vial, run as a daily subcutaneous injection with a step-up schedule.

Inflammation · Gut Health · Skin

What it does

A gut that won't settle

KPV is for the gut that stays irritated no matter what else you've tried, ongoing inflammation rather than a one-off flare. In mouse models of colitis, oral KPV reduced inflammation by getting absorbed through a transporter that switches on specifically in inflamed intestinal tissue, then quieting the signaling that keeps inflammatory genes turned on. That dataset is animal-only and has never been repeated in a human trial, and it used oral dosing, not the injectable vial sold here.

Sources: Dalmasso G, Charrier-Hisamuddin, 2008

Skin and antimicrobial use

KPV is also used for skin flare-ups and infection-prone skin, on the strength of direct antimicrobial activity: in lab testing it inhibited growth of Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans across a range of concentrations, including levels close to what the body produces naturally. Broader claims about wound healing are common among people using it this way, but no dedicated wound-healing study, human or animal, has been conducted.

Sources: Cutuli M, Cristiani, 2000

Daily injection, titrated dose

KPV is sold as a reconstituted vial for subcutaneous injection, run once daily rather than as an occasional shot. The community protocol starts at 200 mcg and steps up over three weeks to a 500 mcg daily maintenance dose. An 8-week course at that maintenance dose needs roughly 28 mg, about three times what a single 10 mg vial holds, worth knowing before you commit to a course.

Sources: peptidedosages.com, KPV 10

Dosing

Community reportedCommunity subcutaneous protocol, 10 mg vial200 mcg to 500 mcg, daily

Community subcutaneous protocol, 10 mg vial
Timeframe	Dosage	Frequency	Note
Week 1	200 mcg	daily	Starting dose¹
Week 2	300 mcg	daily
Week 3	400 mcg	daily
Weeks 4-8	500 mcg	daily	Maintenance²

The cited source describes increasing by roughly 100 mcg weekly as tolerated, over a course of 8 to 12 weeks with an optional extension to 16 weeks under monitoring.
READ WITH THE ROUTE STATEMENT BELOW. This subcutaneous schedule is published by the cited source, but the same site's own mechanism page describes subcutaneous administration only as something that appears in broader peptide therapy conversations, which is a materially weaker claim than a specific mcg-per-day titration implies. No subcutaneous efficacy or pharmacokinetic study, human or animal, was located.

Primary structure

KLysPProVVal

3 residues · 342.44 g/mol

Full research

Evidence tier

Animal and in-vitro only

No completed human clinical trial of KPV as a single-ingredient compound was found across primary-literature and secondary-source searches. Every efficacy dataset located traces to mouse or rat colitis, traumatic brain injury, or skin models, or to isolated human cell lines such as Caco2, Jurkat, and macrophages tested in vitro, rather than to living human subjects. A July 2026 FDA Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee vote on whether KPV can be a 503A compounding bulk substance is a regulatory and access procedural step, not clinical evidence, and must not be read as safety or efficacy data.

Original dosing schedule

The Dosing table above this section now shows a community- or vendor-sourced schedule (peptidedosages.com). The regulatory-label or clinical-trial dosing this entry was originally built on is kept here, unchanged, rather than removed.

Trial or label dosing – No citable dose

No citable figure. None exists. No human trial has tested KPV, so there is no trial-derived or label dose to report. For reference only and explicitly not translatable to a human dose, the founding preclinical study used 100 micromolar KPV in mouse drinking water for in-vivo colitis models and 10 nanomolar in human cell culture. Neither figure is a dose in mg or mcg per body weight and neither has been scaled to or validated in humans.

Identity

Full name	Lysine-Proline-Valine (KPV)
Class	Tripeptide corresponding to residues 11 to 13, the C-terminal fragment, of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone, itself derived from proopiomelanocortin
Molecular weight	342.44 g/mol
Sequence	Lys-Pro-Val (KPV)

Mechanism of action

Plain language

KPV is the tail end of a natural hormone that helps switch off inflammation. Rather than acting on the receptor that hormone normally uses, it appears to get carried inside cells and interfere with the machinery that turns inflammatory genes on.

Technical

Reported anti-inflammatory activity that appears independent of classical melanocortin receptor binding. In intestinal epithelium KPV is transported intracellularly by the PepT1 di- and tripeptide transporter, which is upregulated in inflamed intestinal tissue, and inhibits NF-kappaB and MAP-kinase inflammatory signaling, reducing pro-inflammatory cytokine output. It also shows direct in-vitro antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans.

Sources: Dalmasso G, Charrier-Hisamuddin, 2008, Cutuli M, Cristiani, 2000

What it’s used for

Off-label / community use

Intestinal inflammation. Oral KPV added to drinking water reduced DSS- and TNBS-induced colitis in mice through PepT1-mediated uptake and inhibition of NF-kappaB and MAP-kinase signaling. This is the strongest and most-cited dataset for the compound. It is animal only, from a single research group's model system, and has never been replicated in humans.
Sources: Dalmasso G, Charrier-Hisamuddin, 2008
Colitis-associated colorectal cancer prevention. KPV given to wild-type mice prevented carcinogenesis in a PepT1-dependent manner, and the effect was lost in PepT1-knockout mice. Animal only.
Sources: Viennois E, Ingersoll, 2016
Antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory activity relevant to skin and infection. Alpha-MSH and KPV inhibited Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans growth in vitro across a broad concentration range including physiological picomolar levels. In vitro only.
Sources: Cutuli M, Cristiani, 2000
Wound healing and general skin inflammation are widely claimed in secondary and vendor sources as an extrapolation from the antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory mechanisms above. No dedicated controlled wound-healing dataset, human or animal, was located in this research pass. Treat this as mechanistic plausibility only, not as a distinct evidence base.

Pharmacokinetics

Half-life, Tmax, and bioavailability	Not established No citable figure. NOT VERIFIED in humans. No human pharmacokinetic study was located. In animal and in-vitro stability work, unmodified KPV has been reported to degrade within roughly 24 hours in vivo due to proteolytic susceptibility, which is the basis for research into stabilized analogs using lysine glycoalkylation or D-amino-acid substitution. None of that applies to unmodified KPV as sold. The once-daily frequency in the community protocol is not derived from any published human or animal pharmacokinetic dataset located here and should be treated as empirical convention rather than evidence-based dosing interval.

Half-life, Tmax, and bioavailability

Not established

No citable figure. NOT VERIFIED in humans. No human pharmacokinetic study was located. In animal and in-vitro stability work, unmodified KPV has been reported to degrade within roughly 24 hours in vivo due to proteolytic susceptibility, which is the basis for research into stabilized analogs using lysine glycoalkylation or D-amino-acid substitution. None of that applies to unmodified KPV as sold. The once-daily frequency in the community protocol is not derived from any published human or animal pharmacokinetic dataset located here and should be treated as empirical convention rather than evidence-based dosing interval.

Reconstitution

Vial strength	10 mg (also sold in 5 mg vials)
Diluent	Bacteriostatic water
Diluent volume	3.0 mL
Concentration	Approximately 3.33 mg/mL

Sources: peptidedosages.com, KPV 10

Storage and post-reconstitution stability

Unopened storage

Lyophilized peptide stored frozen or refrigerated and protected from light, per standard peptide-handling practice. No KPV-specific stability study was located.

Post-reconstitution stability – Not established

Refrigerated, general peptide-handling practice

No citable figure. No KPV-specific post-reconstitution stability study was located in this research pass. Separately, unmodified KPV is reported to degrade within roughly 24 hours in vivo, which concerns biological half-life rather than vial stability and should not be conflated with it.

Safety

Notable risks

No completed human safety trial exists, confirmed across every source reviewed. Preclinical tolerability appears favorable within the models tested, but that does not establish human safety. NOT VERIFIED: human LD50, human pharmacokinetics, drug-drug interactions, and pregnancy or lactation safety data. No FDA-approved product exists and no established human dose exists.
Secondary sources raise a theoretical caution for people with active infections or immunodeficiency, given the immune-modulating mechanism. This is flagged as theoretical and is not sourced to any controlled study.

Sources

This is a research and educational reference, not medical advice. Nothing on this site is a recommendation to use any compound.